Month: August 2016

SUMMARY

NCCIC/ICS-CERT is responding to a campaign of activity affecting maritime transportation sector members. This report is intended to provide awareness to the US Critical Infrastructure community and make available Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) and mitigation recommendations.

ICS-CERT is aware of a public report of SQL Injection vulnerability with proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code affecting the Navis WebAccess application. This vulnerability has been exploited against multiple U.S.-based organizations, resulting in data loss.

RISK EVALUATION

Table 1. NCCIC Cyber Incident Scoring System Rating

NCCIC Cyber Incident System Scores

NCCIC Color Code/Level

45

Green (Low)

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability may allow a remote attacker to compromise the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the SQL database. There is a direct threat to the data stored within the system as well as systems that may be related to and/or depend on the system in question.

NCCIC Cyber Incident Scoring System (NCISS) rating explanation

Low

Is unlikely to impact public health or safety, national security, economic security, foreign relations, civil liberties, or public confidence.

The NCISS score is provided to show severity of the incident based on factors listed in NIST 800-60 Rev. 2 as well as potential impact and infrastructure interdependency levels. Functional Impact, Intrusion Scope, Information Impact, Recoverability, and Threat Actor, Critical Infrastructure Interdependencies and Potential Impact are used to assess the risk.

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The exploit code was publicly released, and requires a low sophistication to execute. The SQL injection occurs as part of the URL string. The output is due to a flaw in the error reporting of the application.

DETECTION

Initial detection of the attack may be recognized in the logs of the web application server as well as the database logs. Further investigation will show manipulated URL input and resulting database queries within the database logs.

It is encouraged that anyone running the related software increase the level of logging and be alert to error conditions pertaining to the application.

MITIGATION

ICS-CERT is currently reaching out to the vendor to identify mitigations. Details about the vulnerability can be found at:

ICS-CERT is currently coordinating with the affected entity to provide Incident Response assistance and Assessment services.

Asset Owners/Operators affected by this or similar activity should follow standard forensic data collection techniques including: Memory Capture of affected systems, verbose logging for time periods surrounding malicious activity, and user notification of the incident to ask for any additional information. For more information on potential detection and mitigation strategies, please refer to the ICS-CERT TIP-12-146-01B Targeted Intrusion Detection & Mitigation.

Organizations that observe any suspected malicious activity should follow their established internal procedures and report their findings to ICS-CERT for tracking and correlation against other incidents.

SUMMARY

NCCIC/ICS-CERT is aware of a public report of an SQL Injection vulnerability with proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code affecting Navis WebAccess application. This report was released by “bRpsd” without coordination with either the vendor or ICS-CERT. ICS-CERT has reached out to the affected vendor to validate the report. ICS-CERT is issuing this alert to provide notice of the report and to identify baseline mitigations for reducing risks to this and other cybersecurity attacks.

The report included vulnerability details and PoC exploit code for the following vulnerability:

Vulnerability Type

Remotely Exploitable

Impact

SQL Injection

Yes

Application does not properly sanitize input that may allow a remote attacker to read and modify data in the SQL database.

The affected product, WebAccess, is a web-based application that provides the operator and its constituents with real-time, online access to operational logistics information. The WebAccess application is deployed across the Transportation sector. It is estimated that these products are used worldwide.

FOLLOW-UP

ICS-CERT released a follow-up advisory ICSA-16-231-01 Navis WebAccess SQL Injection Vulnerability to the ICS-CERT Web site on August 18, 2016.

MITIGATION

ICS-CERT is currently reaching out to the vendor to identify mitigations.

ICS-CERT recommends that users take defensive measures to minimize the risk of exploitation of this vulnerability. Specifically, users should:

Minimize the potential damage of a successful SQL injection attack by minimizing the privileges assigned to every database account to only what is necessary.

Minimize network exposure for all systems supporting control systems, and ensure that they are not accessible from the Internet.

Locate systems and devices supporting control system networks behind firewalls, and isolate them from the business network.

When remote access is required, use secure methods, such as Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), recognizing that VPNs may have vulnerabilities and should be updated to the most current version available. Also recognize that VPN is only as secure as the connected devices.

In addition, additional details about mitigating SQL injections can be found in the following publications:

Organizations that observe any suspected malicious activity should follow their established internal procedures and report their findings to ICS-CERT for tracking and correlation against other incidents.